Halfway there - library update

Hello everyone,

So nice to read all your messages again. And if you have read them all also, you would have seen that my grandfather has an email adress now... hahahha who says 'old' people (84) cannot use modern technology :p
Mariska, I'll be sending you a message soon!
The past 2 weeks lots has happened and I am sure lots will happen in the coming 3 weeks I am not able to use the internet. This is because my parents will be coming on the 30th of August, so we'll be doing things all week and quite frankly, I'm also out of money after today :) so, I'm happy my parents are bringing me some.
The last 2 weekends I was all alone, because our caretaker was sick and stayed in his village. Plus there were no volunteers... It was quite quiet the first weekend, especially because I also had to cook for myself. But luckily I had some books left to read and the second day (sick of the books) I went to Milliam's house (one of the ladies I stayed the weekend before) and was rewarded with Nsima and a very warm welcome for the time I was there. So that went well :)
The second week I actually had some work to do and ended up typing some rules for the library in an office and reading a book on how to make a library more attractive. And on sunday, Dorothy (one of our kooks, cleaning ladies, and a lovely funny lady) took me to her house to meet her family. That was very nice again.
At her family I again noticed how well the older generation speaks English compared to the younger generation (at least in the North). Now I'm reading this book about the time of Banda (now 19 years ago) and how he dealt with the educational system. And what I see at the primary school is that there are not enough teachers, they don't show up, or they are standing by themselves in front of a class of 120 students.... Furthermore, the older generation got classes in English from standard 1 (groep 1, 6 years old) and now it is from standard 5 (groep 5). So all in all I can understand why the younger generation is lacking the ability to speak decent English (even How old are you is too difficult at times). I have offered my services for the new school year (and my last 2 months) so we will see what I can do for them. Even if it is a little, at least it is something.

The other books I was reading were about friendship (omdat hij er was, omdat ik er was, Marieke) and about Greek mythology and how this reflects upon the behavior of women (finding the goddess in every woman). This in combination with the cultural mistakes I made here and what I learn from them and the conversations I have this week with Daan and Willemijn (2 new volunteers of 29) it gives me the opportunity to learn from my bad qualities and discover new good qualities. I don't know if I will really change, but at least I can do some self reflection while being here and will try to change some aspects of my being :p hahahhaha

The library is going forward!!! It is been plastered (cement on the walls) and I helped, which was great fun. Especially since most of the youngster were drinking and made all kind of funny comments. I'm very sorry I cannot show you the pictures now, but I will try to use Mariska's suggestion and who knows soon you might see some pictures :D But this means if the door is fixed and the bookcase (a closed one with a lock to keep it from mice and other bugs and makes it difficult to steal books) we are open for business. It is still quite a lot of money (around 200 euro's), and I will pay it with your contributions and my own money so that we will be done soon :D Owh, oeps... then I should also tell you that last week I spend from 10-15 in the library looking through books which I brought back with me to luviri and they were around 200 books :) so that made me very happy as well! I think I could have taken home more, but it was such a mess and we had to repack everything 3 times, because they forgot to tell me I had to register every book by hand... but still it is a good start! Now hopefully we can also get the books from Kamusu Academy near Lilongwe quick (which are now 500 books), but I have no idea yet on how to get them here... this is still Malawi and everything has to be checked and rechecked before actually going there to pick them up (which is a 6 hour travel one way).
But at least the building is done and we have a nice amount of books to start with. The books are mostly english novels, english children books, mathematics books and some chechewa books. And one of the novels (many stories in one) also had the whole Romeo and Juliet in there, which they need for their final examination in form 4 (last year of secondary school). So many people are very happy about that!
Now we have to decide on fees and train the youngsters (we have 5 now) and then at least we are planning to open 3 days a week. I do not expect it to be more, though they themselves wanted to open 7 days a week, which I loved hearing! But it is just not manageable yet. I also got a phone call from the PEA (primary educational adviser) and will meet her Friday morning at Luviri :) Perfect!

The nursery is a bit more quiet now, because the primary school is having a holiday and for the children it is very normal that their older brothers and sisters are bringing them to school, so now they don't come. But we have a group of 20, which is nice because you can really pay attention to every single one of them. The bigger once are learning their ABC pretty fast... we are up to E now with all of them (group of around 10 who regularly come). They also learned 2 new poems and also the little once are starting to talk right now. what a little attention can do :)

Further, I am just still enjoying everything... the people are still nice, the weather is good again (last weekend was very cold, 15 degrees Celsius) and the new volunteers are lovely. I am also still admiring the nature and was very sad when last Sunday the second goat in a month died because it swallowed plastic. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed eating it (how mean as this may sound), but it is just stupid that it would die because of plastic lying around. When Jacqueline is back this Friday I will discuss with her what I can do to make the dying less frequent... even if this means I will have to pick up the garbage myself, I will do it....

I hope everyone is enjoying their holidays! I'm still missing you all and would have wanted you to have experienced this with me, but I also realize how much I gain from doing this by myself... Malawi is going slow but strong and I think is progressing on every area 'the west' wants it to do as good as 'the west' in. With this I wanted to end my email with telling how it ended for the gay couple who were jailed just before I went to Malawi. As you might now (or not), they were freed under international pressure, BUT one of the men decided to marry a women, because he got money from a wealthy business man. For Malawi this is another proof: see, homosexuality doesn't exist, they just wanted some attention to themselves, or it is a trick from the west.... sad but true!
For me this again showed we might not intervene in these kind of issues in a developing country where people are still hungry, and some children hardly go to school...
An other sign of this is that I heard on the Malawi radio that they want to give money to improve schools so handicapt children can go to school. It might sounds mean, but why would you do that if the Northern region does not even have enough teachers and the whole country has not enough jobs and food to supply its inhabitants...
sorry, if this comes across quite harsh.... You will see in a phone call that I have a more elaborate view then what I can write down here, but this is the basic of it.

I will see you all in 2 months and a week!
lots of love, hugs and kisses
Nienke